It lets founder attempt to revive struggling company without Wall Street scrutiny

What’s next

• Once the deal closes, Dell’s stock will stop trading on the Nasdaq, 25 years after the company raised $30 million in an IPO.

• The firm has 45 days to solicit other potential suitors to submit higher bids.

Slumping personal computer maker Dell is bowing out of the stock market in a $24.4 billion buyout that represents the largest deal of its kind since the Great Recession dried up the financing for such risky maneuvers.

The complex agreement announced Tuesday will allow Dell’s management, including eponymous founder Michael Dell, to attempt a company turnaround away from the glare and financial pressures of Wall Street.

Dell stockholders will be paid $13.65 per share to leave the company on its own. That’s 25 percent more than the stock’s price of $10.88 before word of the buyout talks trickled out three weeks ago. But it’s a steep markdown from the shares’ price of $24 six years ago when Michael Dell returned for a second go-round as CEO.

Dell, which trails Hewlett-Packard and Lenovo Group in the PC market, rose 15 cents to close at $13.42, indicating that investors don’t believe a better offer is likely.

“Before this agreement, the company’s core PC business was deteriorating more than its new enterprise business and the net effect was weak revenue growth,” said Shebly Seyrafi, an analyst at FBN Securities. “Now they have the opportunity to be more aggressive and flexible, fix things and turn it around. Normally for deals like this, we see a 15 to 25 percent premium, so I think this price is reasonable.”

The chances of a successful counter offer look slim, given the forces lined up behind the current deal.

Michael Dell, the company’s largest shareholder, is throwing in his 14 percent stake and an undisclosed sliver of his $16 billion fortune to help finance the sale to a group led by the investment firm Silver Lake.

Software maker Microsoft, which counts Dell among its biggest customers, is backing the deal by lending $2 billion to the buyers. The remaining money to pay for the acquisition is being borrowed through loans arranged by several banks, saddling Dell with an estimated $15 billion in debt that could raise doubts about its financial stability among its risk-averse corporate customers.

The sale is structured as a leveraged buyout, or LBO, which requires the acquired company to repay the debt taken on to finance the deal.

Dell’s sale is the second highest-priced LBO of a technology company, trailing the $27 billion paid for First Data Corp. in 2007.

Dell’s decision to go private is a reflection of the tough times facing the personal computer industry as more technology spending flows toward smartphones and tablet computers. PC sales fell 3.5 percent last year, according to the research group Gartner, the first annual decline in more than a decade. What’s more, tablet computers are expected to outsell laptops this year.